1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to cooking apparatuses and, more particularly, to a cooking apparatus which is designed to uniformly heat and cook food laid on a grill unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is well known to those skilled in the art, cooking apparatuses are appliances which heat and cook food using heat generated by heating units.
Of these cooking apparatuses, there is a cooking apparatus which directly transmits heat to food, such as meat or sausage, to cook the food. The cooking apparatus includes a cabinet with a heating unit being provided in the cabinet to directly transmit heat to the food. A grill unit is mounted at an upper portion of the cabinet to support the food in such a way as to be spaced apart from the heating unit. When heat is generated by the heating unit, the food laid on the grill unit is cooked using the heat.
However, the conventional cooking apparatus has a problem in that the heating unit is installed in the cabinet at a position offset from an effective grill part (that is, a part of the grill unit on which the food is laid), so as to prevent the heating unit from being contaminated with a material dropping from the food laid on the grill unit such as oil. Consequently, a relatively large amount of thermal energy is supplied to an edge of the grill unit adjacent to the heating unit in comparison with a central portion of the grill unit, and thereby food laid close to the edge of the grill unit and food laid on the central portion of the grill unit are differently cooked.